A third of teens prefer AI 'companions' to people, survey shows
BERLIN: More than half of US teenagers regularly confide in artificial intelligence (AI) "companions" and more than 7 in 10 have done so at least once, despite warnings that chatbots can have negative mental health impacts and offer dangerous advice.
Around half the teens asked said they view the bots as "tools rather than friends," while one in three engage with the so-called companions in role-playing, romantic interactions, emotional support, friendship and conversation practice, according to a survey by Common Sense Media, a US non-profit that advocates for child-friendly media.
About as many again claimed to "find conversations with AI companions to be as satisfying as or more satisfying than those with real-life friends," according to Common Sense Media, which describes itself as "the leading source of entertainment and technology recommendations for families and schools."
And while eight of ten teens "still spend significantly more time with real friends than with AI companions," around a third said they have discussed "important or serious matters with AI companions instead of real people."
Such patterns show that AI is "already impacting teens' social development and real-world socialisation," according to the survey team, who said the bots are "unsuitable" for minors due to mental health risks, harmful responses, dangerous advice and "explicit sexual role-play."
Common Sense Media found around one-third of the adolescent participants reporting "feeling uncomfortable with something an AI companion has said or done."
"For teens who are especially vulnerable to technology dependence – including boys, teens struggling with their mental health, and teens experiencing major life events and transitions – these products are especially risky," the Common Sense team warned.
The survey results followed the recent publication of a paper by the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences warning of a "real worry" that "artificial intimacy" with AI could result in "disrupting" of human relationships.
Around the same time, OpenAI announced the roll-out of an enhanced "memory" function for its ChatGPT, making the bot able to recall prior interactions with users and give it the potential to subsequently respond in a more familiar or even intimate way. – dpa
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Straits Times
4 hours ago
- New Straits Times
AI search pushing an already weakened media industry to the brink
GENERATIVE artificial intelligence assistants like ChatGPT are cutting into traditional online search traffic, depriving news sites of visitors and impacting the advertising revenue they desperately need, in a crushing blow to an industry fighting for survival. "The next three or four years will be incredibly challenging for publishers everywhere. No one is immune from the AI summaries storm gathering on the horizon," said Matt Karolian, vice-president of research and development at Boston Globe Media. "Publishers need to build their own shelters or risk being swept away." While data remains limited, a recent Pew Research Centre study shows that AI-generated summaries now appearing regularly in Google searches discourage users from clicking through to source articles. When AI summaries are present, users click on suggested links half as often compared with traditional searches. This represents a devastating loss of visitors for online media sites that depend on traffic for advertising revenue and subscription conversions. According to Northeastern University Professor John Wihbey, these trends "will accelerate, and pretty soon, we will have an entirely different web". The dominance of tech giants like Google and Meta had slashed online media advertising revenue, forcing publishers to pivot toward paid subscriptions. But Wihbey said that subscriptions also depend on traffic, and paying subscribers alone aren't sufficient to support major media organisations. The Boston Globe group has begun seeing subscribers sign up through ChatGPT, offering a new touchpoint with potential readers, Karolian said. However, "these remain incredibly modest compared with other platforms, including even smaller search engines". To survive what many see as an inevitable shift, media companies are increasingly adopting GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) — a technique that replaces traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). This involves providing AI models with clearly labelled content, good structure, comprehensible text and strong presence on social networks and forums like Reddit that get crawled by AI companies. But a fundamental question remains: "Should you allow OpenAI crawlers to crawl your website and your content?" asks Thomas Peham, CEO of optimisation startup OtterlyAI. Burned by aggressive data collection from major AI companies, many news publishers have chosen to fight back by blocking AI crawlers from accessing their content. Some progress has been made on this front. Licensing agreements have emerged between major players, such as the New York Times and Amazon, Google and Associated Press, and Mistral and Agence France-Presse. But the issue is far from resolved, as major legal battles are underway, most notably the New York Times' suit against OpenAI and Microsoft. Publishers face a dilemma: blocking AI crawlers protects their content but reduces exposure to potential new readers. Faced with this challenge, "media leaders are increasingly choosing to reopen access", Peham observed. Yet even with open access, success isn't guaranteed. According to OtterlyAI data, media outlets represent just 29 per cent of citations offered by ChatGPT, trailing corporate websites at 36 per cent. And while Google search has traditionally privileged sources recognised as reliable, "we don't see this with ChatGPT", Peham said. The stakes extend beyond business models. According to the Reuters Institute's 2025 Digital News Report, about 15 per cent of people under 25 use generative AI to get their news. Given questions about AI sourcing and reliability, this trend risks confusing readers about information origins and credibility, much like social media did before it. "At some point, someone has to do the reporting," Karolian said. "Without original journalism, none of these AI platforms would have anything to summarise."
The Star
5 hours ago
- The Star
US agency approves OpenAI, Google, Anthropic for federal AI vendor list
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. government's central purchasing arm on Tuesday added OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude to a list of approved artificial intelligence vendors to speed use by government agencies. The move by the General Services Administration, allows the federal government advance adoption of AI tools by making them available for government agencies through a platform with contract terms in place. GSA said approved AI providers "are committed to responsible use and compliance with federal standards." (Reporting by David Shepardson and Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru)
The Star
17 hours ago
- The Star
Generative AI apps have already raked in nearly US$2bil this year
Usage patterns of these apps are starting to look similar to those of search engines. — Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash This year, people have nearly doubled their spending on generative AI apps when it comes to both time and money, proving the rise of this technology's popularity. In the first half of 2025, GenAI apps pulled in roughly US$1.9bil (RM8bil) of in-app purchase revenue versus US$932mil (RM3.9bil) in the second half of 2024, according to a new report from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which looks at data from Apple's App Store and Google Play. The exponential growth in hours users spent on generative AI apps is notable as well. Users spent a whopping 15.6 billion hours using these apps in the first half of 2025 – which is about an 84 percent jump from the second half of 2024. Generative AI apps were downloaded 1.7 billion times in the first half of 2025, a jump of 67 percent since the second half of 2024. ChatGPT dominated the global downloads, followed by DeepSeek and Google Gemini, although Gemini overtook DeepSeek in the US market. Usage patterns of these apps are starting to look similar to those of search engines. Users averaged 7.8 sessions per day on ChatGPT in the first half of 2025, which just exceed the 7.4 average daily sessions users spent using top search engine and browser apps. They still spent, on average, more time daily on search engine apps, but that difference is narrowing. 'The potential for ChatGPT to disrupt traditional search is already apparent. Over the past few years, ChatGPT's engagement metrics have soared, now rivalling those of leading search engine and browser applications,' the report reads. And when it comes to the average number of days certain apps are used on a monthly basis, Google still reigns supreme. But the report notes ChatGPT was about on par with X and Reddit in terms of days used in June 2025. 'It's notable that ChatGPT (and AI assistants more broadly) has yet to fully replace search engines like Google when it comes to consistent usage,' the report states. What are users spending all that time doing with generative AI? According to Sensor Tower's report, 8.3 percent of ChatGPT prompts in the second quarter of 2025 involved tech support and troubleshooting; followed by writing and editing, which accounted for about 7.7 percent of prompts. Education and teaching, coding help, and health and wellness rounded out the top five. 'As ChatGPT has expanded its user base, its use cases have become more diverse,' the report states. – Inc./Tribune News Service
